We see some pretty over the top verbiage from wine reviewers trying to be different/cute/precious, but this local one has to be near the top of Mount Pretentious. I thought under the circumstances you'd allow me the 'twitage' in the thread title.

What do you think? Methinks he has stuffed a thesaurus up his fundament (where it rests alongside his palate).

Château Clément St-Jean 2009 - spoons calm, cool, collected as a Bordeaux Cru Bourgeois with fruit, acidity and tannin all in balance. Beauty grows vicariously out of the hebetic and muliebrous 2009 vintage by way of an immediate transference to the Medoc’s middle class. This château shines, “thinking clean clean thoughts” and demonstrates there is an ecclesiastical time for everything.

I love obscure vocabulary but this is not how such words should be used. Arabic has a literary tradition of springing verbal surprises (nawadir, or rare words) on the reader. My favourite travel writer, Tim Mackntosh-Smith is a master of nawadir:

"The odd one is an ornament, like a mole on a beautiful face," he said, as if he were quoting an Arabic proverb, as he often does. "I think it's good for the reader to have a puzzle every so often, though not too many," he said.

Describing a beached whale in Oman , for example, he writes in "Travels With a Tangerine," "I tried to imagine this inert, axungious blob alive, flexing and somersaulting through the deep ocean." His editor, unable to find the adjective axungious in any dictionary, queried him. Mr. Mackintosh-Smith was able to cite a 17th-century writer who used the word (it's from Latin) to describe something resembling lard.

- NYT, 11.1.2003

The author of the TN should perhaps heed this advice.

I don't drink wine because of religious reasons ... only for other reasons.

Otto Nieminen wrote: His editor, unable to find the adjective axungious in any dictionary, queried him. Mr. Mackintosh-Smith was able to cite a 17th-century writer who used the word (it's from Latin) to describe something resembling lard.

Robin Garr wrote:I have a pretty good vocabulary, but I had to look up "muliebrous." I wasn't sure it was a word.

I had to as well, Robin and I have a very large vocabulary that I sometimes inflict without thinking on others. That particular word is one I don't even recall seeing before and has to be the result of a conscious search in a thesaurus.

Which remninds me, I haven't posted any oddball words lately - must get to that.